Lest We Forget That They Weren't British

The Heathen Chinee are seeking to use the Second World War for political ends, which is certainly too bad of them. The government is planning a massive military parade through Tiananmen Square, ostensibly to commemorate the end of hostilities in 1945 but in fact as an excuse to thump the nationalist tub and annoy Japan; rather as if last year's orgies of poppy-kitsch had been amalgamated and combined with the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. Like the USSR, China was a minor ally during the Anglo-American triumph against fascism, suffering a minor fifteen million deaths; and like the USSR it repaid its Western benefactors with a prolonged post-war failure to adopt such virtuous democratic institutions as capitalists and landlords.